Big Gulp, Meet Big Brother

[bae]

Actually, I believe the conservative position is that government should get their hands off my jelly doughnuts, and my health care. Problem solved!

Exactly. Personal responsibility, *and* individual liberty.

When the government steps in to take over responsibility, liberty suffers. When everyone else is paying for your health care, they get to tell you how many cheeseburgers you can eat per decade.

[creaker]

Exactly. Personal responsibility, *and* individual liberty.

When the government steps in to take over responsibility, liberty suffers. When everyone else is paying for your health care, they get to tell you how many cheeseburgers you can eat per decade.

The place to start then is eliminating Medicare - most of these "bad choices" health issues tend to manifest in later life when most people are on government funded healthcare.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Just as the financial world seemingly believes that it should be able to privatize profits but socialize losses, so some believe that one should be able to privatize whatever one eats/drinks but expect to socialize the healthcare costs of doing so.

Well really what could be a more individual choice than what goes into your own personal mouth? The thoughts you think, whom you sleep with? Sugar is an addiction maybe but so be it. My actual position is just one with a long history and basically what liberals have always believed historically: government should regulate what industry is allowed to do with the food supply (which often happens without people's knowledge), but not what the individual puts in their mouth. Have standards for what is allowed in food, have transparency so people know what they are getting, regulate industry. In the real world though, I'm lukewarm on even this, when what I actually see often happening is corruption, is regulatory capture, is the regulations being used to put the good responsible small farmer out of business (think people like Joel Salitan) and benefit huge agrigarbage. But that is a *practicality* objection and not a philosophical one. It's not a position that government shouldn't be allowed to regulate what pesticides are used, or ban pink slime. It should. Will sensible regulation be acheived without money out of politics and an informed activist citizenry? No, maybe not.

As for what people put in their mouths: the government doesn't even have a good track record on accuracy on this. For how many years was margarine pushed as better than butter? This was completely allowed and in fact endorsed by government. For how many years was eating a dozen grains the base of the food pyramid? Stuff yourself silly with white bread tactically endorsed even if a few mumbles were made about whole grains.

And yet efforts by U.S. President Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, to fight childhood obesity by encouraging healthier eating have been widely ridiculed by conservatives here, many of whom are plenty fat themselves. Step right up, Rush Limbaugh.

Encouraging healthier eating via the organic white house garden and stuff is great.

Channelling millions of his listeners, Limbaugh blasted the president’s wife for suggesting Americans eat "cardboard and tofu … roots, and berries and tree bark," and howled with glee when she and her family were spotted dining on ribs in a restaurant.

That's his belief system that healthy food automatically is bad tasting. It's a belief system, and of course it will keep people weighing more than they would otherwise. If in your mind the only choices are huge piles of restaurant garbage and tree bark and tofu then you will eat huge piles of restaurant garbage in UTTER IGNORANCE of what you are actually being fed! What if you could eat produce, and full fat animal products and olive oil on your salad and so on and it wouldn't actually kill you? What if you could eat real food? (not too much is definitely a good idea, mostly plants will be debated until the cows come home). The whole American food system is a BIG LIE, an advertising myth, a false choice if ever there were one, the idea that only fast food chemicals taste good is a LIE. Having an open mind to even question propaganda enough to save yourself from dying a bloated corpse in your bed would be too much to ask of Rush maybe though. Allow your mind to be poisoned and therefore poison your body ...

I read a quote recently I like: American's don't eat food, they eat carbs and chemicals. - carbo loaded chemicals - how fun! That's really really deeply true. I mean whatever plenty of Americans do eat food, of course, but a lot of products sold out there ARE little more than carbs and chemicals.

"It doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice," he declared, insinuating that she could stand to lose a few pounds, too.

I'm trying to say that our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit Issue."

That's to focus only on weight though, which maybe isn't as strongly linked to diseases as expected. No I'm not saying: hey everyone get huge! Just that the correlation with disease and being overweight may actually not be as strong as suspected, that it's linked to something like arthritus of the knees or something is just pretty obvious though.

Again, according to the Centres for Disease Control, obesity is directly related to heart disease, stroke, certain types of cancer, and, of course, Type 2 diabetes, which is becoming an epidemic here. Those conditions kill.

That seems to have some contesting though

What Limbaugh and the get-your-government-hands-off-my-jelly-doughnuts crowd are really saying is that they not only have the right to get fat, but the cost of their over-indulgence should also be disproportionately borne by everybody else — hardly a conservative position.

And blaming individuals exclusively without any regard to social context isn't a liberal position . What social context: at least, an anything goes food system (so much alteration to the food supply), and EXTREMELY misguided subsidy policies (government actually contributing to the problem, maybe *THE* major contributor with it's subsidy policies really). Limbaughs position might actually be completely consistent, that government should have no involvement in medicine at all (except I would hope control of true epidemics!), most people don't agree with that position for things like the very poor, and emergency rooms at least though.

[Gingerella72]

It's my understanding that the proposed ban is only for *serving* larger-than-16 oz sweetened drinks in restaurants, movie theaters and street carts. That is to say, items like fountain soda and bottled beverages, correct? But I see nothing that says it would stop an individual from walking into a grocery store and buying as many cans/bottles/containers of the stuff as they want. And, they're not banning anyone from purchasing smaller-than-16 oz-drinks, so it's not like they can't have it period. I'm failing to see why reducing the size served at restaurants, et al is a bad thing.

There was a time that a single serving size of soda was 6.5 oz. That was the original glass coke bottle size. Then in the 1950's they hit on the idea of offering multiple sized bottles in 10, 12 and 26 oz versions, along with offering it in cans. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. As the decades have passed we've been duped by advertising into believing we need more and more and bigger is better, and if you don't consume this quantity then you're not getting your money's worth, etc. And now we're complaining because we're being asked to go back to a more traditional size of soft drink? Again, how is this bad?

[Gregg]

Exactly. Personal responsibility, *and* individual liberty.

When the government steps in to take over responsibility, liberty suffers. When everyone else is paying for your health care, they get to tell you how many cheeseburgers you can eat per decade.

The whole concept of personal responsibility seems to have gone out of fashion, doesn't it? I'm not convinced it is even possible to regain that with such emphasis placed on being cared for at every turn. It is extremely ironic that so many who decry the control they assume is held by people with extreme wealth would, in the blink of an eye, subordinate even the smallest aspect of their living to a powerful government. Follow the piper, he will lead you to the soma.

[bae]

It is extremely ironic that so many who decry the control they assume is held by people with extreme wealth would, in the blink of an eye, subordinate even the smallest aspect of their living to a powerful government. Follow the piper, he will lead you to the soma.

Indeed. Happily stumbling in the dark of their mandated eco-correct lighting to flush their eco-correct toilet repeatedly hoping it will drain, then back to bed, taking care not to abrade their mattress tags.

"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."

[Alan]

A few non-members thoughts on the subject:

"In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves." ~ Walter E. Williams

"If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all." – Jacob Hornberger (1995)

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." – Robert Heinlein

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. – Robert A. Heinlein

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." ~ P.J. O'Rourke

A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. – Thomas Jefferson

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law … that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts. – H. L. Mencken

The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others – with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means. – Henry Grady Weaver, author of a classic book on freedom, The Mainspring of Human Progress

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). ~ Ayn Rand

The American heritage was one of individual liberty, personal responsibility and freedom from government … Unfortunately … that heritage has been lost. Americans no longer have the freedom to direct their own lives … Today, it is the government that is free – free to do whatever it wants. There is no subject, no issue, no matter … that is not subject to legislation. – Harry Browne

[bae]

Another favorite:

The protection guaranteed by the amendments is much broader in scope. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone-the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect, that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

- Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 27 U.S. 438 (1928)

[catherine]

"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things."

Do you suppose the corporations, who are in existence ONLY to make money, are concerned about man's spiritual nature? Do you really think that Philip Morris and PepsiCo feel that material things are not important? Do they really care if they coerce children to consume vast quantities of junk, because, hey, those kids don't HAVE to buy it and what about their parents?--even if they've exerted their power to seduce consumers through relentless marketing. So, if they can spend billions of dollars to persuade people they need things that are going to do them harm and hide the truth about that harm, are they are being true to the Founding Father's principles to protect Americans?

I am not about to be naive enough to trust corporations' ability to protect the public welfare because their raison d'être is to make money. It's like having a pit bull in your house and not leashing it, and when it attacks your child you say, hey, the child shouldn't have been standing there.

[razz]

Well, it seems that the CBC journalist's opinion is not the generally accepted from all the views posted so far. Those darn Canadians, eh?